


A Shock to the System

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Cirque de Triomphe [60]
Category: DCU, Static Shock
Genre: (selling people to aliens), Aftermath of Torture, Dakota - Freeform, Earth-3, Family, Family Drama, Friendship, Gen, Mirror Universe, Teamwork, Villain Virgil, kiddie torture, mention of human trafficking, not severe though, some discussion of race, teen heroes, title is cheesy and I feel no shame, working outside the system
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-17 21:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15470790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: The fire gave him something to look at, anyway. It bobbed and danced, and Fireball could watch it flicker over the mysterious instruments and control panels. He watched the shadows dance over the sheet-metal surfaces bolted to what he was pretty sure were concrete walls.Watched one of the shadows in the corner of his eye curl up into the outline of a hand. He froze. "Ebon?" he whispered. His flame licked up brighter. "That you?"





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: It occurs to me belatedly we (i.e. anyone reading this because it's in the Cirque series, hi!) might not all know Static Shock, so fyi he's a cool teen hero created by Dwayne McDuffy, who had a prestigious career trying to make comics less white. 
> 
> Premise is, a bunch of teenagers in midwest rustbelt city of Dakota got mutant superpowers because an evil corporation spilled toxic waste just when all the gang kids plus everyone they could pressgang last minute had gotten together on the docks for an ultimate showdown. 
> 
> Shadow Thief does not wear a hat, but his pecs tend to be drawn weirdly cut, that's a thing. For the various Dakota characters I've relied mostly on the cartoon for reasons of 1) I've seen it and 2) the characterizations there seem to have been more consistent, but I've broken Richie back up into Rick and Frieda. Mostly to avoid having to deal with Evil!Gear tbh. 
> 
> And I swapped Ebon and his brother's ages, not that it matters because Rubber Band Man doesn't actually appear.

Fireball breathed.

He was at the point where he couldn't take that for granted—the way his arms were tied behind him meant his lungs couldn't fill too full, and everything hurt, and there'd been a while earlier when he expected to stop breathing forever really soon.

The steel column he was tied to was cold against his back. He could have warmed it up, but even though that would feel better it would cost more energy and he didn't know how long he'd need to last. He'd been alone here for what had to be hours now, and nothing he'd come up with had gotten him free, or even gotten him any slack.

Where had Shock learned to tie people up, even? They went to the same high school, there were no hostage-taking classes. Maybe he'd been a scout or something.

He kept a little ball of fire dancing on his forehead, even if it was technically a waste of energy. His captor had turned out all the lights on his way out, and Frank might not be _afraid of the dark_ but he still didn't want… The fire gave him something to look at, anyway. It bobbed and danced, and Fireball could watch it flicker over the mysterious instruments and control panels. He watched the shadows dance over the sheet-metal surfaces bolted to what he was pretty sure were concrete walls. (Had to be thick ones, kept the noise inside.)

Watched one of the shadows in the corner of his eye curl up into the outline of a hand. He froze. "Ebon?" he whispered. His flame licked up brighter. "That you?"

The figure curled up further, and then stepped out into the third dimension. "No," it said. It was taller than Ebon, skinnier, had more grey in the black, and had a higher voice with an East Coast kind of accent.

Also, it was wearing the world's stupidest hat.

"Shadow Walker," Fireball guessed aloud.

Ebon had mentioned there was another guy out there with powers a lot like his, and right now Fireball didn't care what the hell the _wrong_ shadow-powered-guy was doing in Dakota. "Get me out before that deranged electromagnet gets back."

Shadow Walker moved forward, looking steadily more like a normal person as he got further from the wall, though still with that Ebon-like lack of detail. Seemed like he subscribed to the 'body stocking' school of superhero costumes, possibly as part of a quest to show off his pecs. They were admittedly pretty impressive, especially on what looked to be a pretty lankily built guy.

"He's not coming back," the man said, as he stepped around behind Frank to presumably figure out his bonds.

That should have been reassuring, but there was something in the tone that wasn't. A finality Frank had only heard in movies. "You mean like…"

"He tangled with the Hawks," said Shadow Walker. Who was one of the main heroes you heard about standing up to them, so that tracked. "That's how I knew to look for you."

Fireball figured Shock had said something about his location _while_ pissing off Hawks, but the tone was still— "You mean he's _dead?_ " Frank asked, and hated how young his voice came out. Shock had been _torturing_ him a few hours ago. He shouldn't be this upset.

But they were both just kids, really. Virgil Hawkins hated English class and traded parts of his stupid bag lunch with his stupid friends, when not cutting class to be a supervillain. And now he was just dead? There was no way you could just _not be upset_ about something like that, and Frank almost set his rescuer on fire by accident when his hands tried to flame up.

"He put up a good fight," Shadow Walker said tonelessly, after a second. It sounded like he was sawing at the asbestos ropes with a small knife. No points for planning. "He was very strong. Clever. I was planning to step in at the ideal moment. But Shock was inexperienced, and made an error."

There was _so much_ that didn't explain, but Fireball had to admit that it was kind of comforting his archnemesis had been able to very nearly take both the Thanagarians, who were super experienced alien warriors and had a really high official government threat rating. "Damn right he was inexperienced," he muttered.

Great, now he was feeling slightly _bad_ that he'd never been trying hard enough to hurt the asshole, so his crazy classmate didn't know how to handle lethal force. Was he ever going to get untied? His shoulders were killing him, and he wanted to set something on fire already!

"He was trying to sell you," Shadow Walker stated.

" _What?_ "

"The Hawks have been collecting metahumans—I don't yet know why. They're offering a bounty. Shock decided to make a profit from his captive, and approached them, but he was…very young."

"A moron, you mean," Fireball said, numbly. Shock had always been a slick tactician—it was hard just keeping up with him, let alone pulling ahead—but he also tended to overreach himself. _He was going to sell me to aliens?_

He didn't know why it was such a surprise; he'd been expecting to be killed eventually if he didn't get away, and really selling him to aliens was _more_ in-character than that, but it was just like picturing him dead—Shock was a bad guy, but they were both just kids. Crossing those kinds of lines just didn't make _sense._ (He knew that was stupid; kids killed other kids in gang life all the time. But you never believed it until it happened.)

"Once he had told them your location, Katar Hol announced that they would not be paying, but adding him to their collection."

"And I bet he was so surprised," Frank said. Hawkins always thought he was such _hot shit_ , he'd probably expected the bad news alien supervillains to treat him like a colleague. And now he was dead.

The rope finally parted, and Frank cringed as his arms fell to his sides and his shoulders _screamed_. If he had a goddamn rotator cuff injury from this, after managing to avoid doing that to himself in training or fights _all this time_ —well, he couldn't exactly set Shock's dreads on fire for it now. Even if he got the opportunity, that'd be _desecrating a corpse_ , and shit. Fuck everything, ow.

He said that last part out loud, and Shadow Walker managed to radiate silent disapproval from _behind him_. "We must move quickly," he said. "Can you handle your own exit?"

"Do I have to be sneaky?"

"Not if you're fast." And by the time Frank turned around his rescuer was a two-dimensional shadow, sliding away toward the wall—and straight through it. _Of_ course. Blargh. Worst rescue ever.

But that was okay. Frank turned to face the big metal door, that had no controls for the lock mechanism because Shock _electrocuted it with his powers_ to activate it (Frank had asked at the beginning of his captivity _what if your powers aren't working?_ and Shock had bitten out _That is not going to happen,_ like he could just make it true by saying) and called up all the anger he had, every simmering trace of it, until flame was licking up from his back and the steel floor around his feet was getting hot enough to cook on, and then _fired_.

The door exploded outward in one of the largest balls of flame he'd ever made, and Frank hopped after it, drinking down the lingering flares as he passed through them. Not surprised at all to find he'd been held in one of the abandoned warehouses, down by where the Bang had happened. Shock must have refitted the place using his metal-levitating abilities. And a good chunk of stolen money.

If Shock wasn't dead, he would be so, completely unfairly mad about Fireball exploding his door.

Frank was still in costume, so he set off running up the wharfs without worrying about who saw him. The important thing was clearing out before Hawklady and Hawklord showed up.

* * *

He called Ebon as soon as he got home. "Where have you _been?_ " his repeated-team-up-with-er demanded as soon as he picked up, which was kind of nice because it wasn't like anyone else had noticed he'd been gone for almost three days. Well, his sister had technically noticed, but she'd just figured he was getting high with his nonexistent friends.

At least they'd had Friday off school, so he wasn't going to get lectured by holier-than-thou teachers about applying himself. Shitty way to spend a long weekend, though.

"Shock captured me," he said. 'Captured' sounded better than 'kidnapped,' made him less of a victim and more of a POW. "Shadow Walker came and got me out. He said— _listen_ , Eebs," he pushed on, when Ebon wanted to react to either Shadow Walker or captured, "he said Shock tried to sell me to the Hawks, but wound up fighting them, and they killed him. He's dead."

"Dead." Ebon took it with the same sort of flat shock Fireball remembered feeling, but different, too—Ebon was just as angry as him, really, but he handled it better, and Frank always had the sneaking suspicion that Ebon had way more experience than he did with everything, especially things like death.

Though maybe that was just the impression the guy tried to give. Ebon was hard to get a read on. Even his accent was slow curling ghetto sound wrapped around smooth precise diction and word choices that half the time belonged in a book, and neither half ever sounded more fake than the other. He weighed the word in his mouth again, like the first time had been getting a feel for it and now he had its measure. "Dead. Did he see the body?"

"Oh my fucking _Christ_ you go straight to that?"

"Yes. Without a body, the report's nothing but hearsay, hothead."

"Blah, blah, he didn't say, okay? I was kind of focused on getting untied and Walker was all freaked out about getting out before the Thanagarians came—if he's so scared of them, why's he their enemy?"

"Could be they took something important from him."

Frank winced. If he'd ever tried to sound all solemn and meaningful like that he'd just sound like a cheap Halloween movie narrator, but somehow Ebon made it work. "Yeah," he admitted, and for a second he was back in that refitted warehouse with electricity jolting through him, and he couldn't burn but he could still _hurt,_ and the deep aches in his muscles down to his bones from convulsing over and over were actually worse than just about any beating he'd ever taken.

He hadn't really been thinking about that at the time, though; he'd been counting down until Shock's lightning stopped his heart.

He sucked in a breath, dragging himself out of it, and realized he didn't know how long he'd been silent. Too long, to judge by the way Ebon's voice on the phone sounded decisive and firm like there was a problem that needed solving.

"I'm coming over."

"What? Wait, man, don't—" The call cut off, and a second later there was a muffled thump from inside the hall closet.

Frank winced. No one seemed to have noticed, though, so he hung the phone back on the hook and eased the door open. Pale eyes in a face the color of night gave him a very communicative look as Ebon fought to keep his feet on top of what amounted to a shifting pile of junk. "When's the last time this closet been cleaned?"

"Uh, I'm going to take a wild guess at 'never.' Can we go back to you appearing from under the bed? That was a tiny amount less stupid."

"Says the man who didn't end that experiment covered in dust bunnies."

Frank rolled his eyes and checked both ways again before waving the inky shadow in a high-collared vest out of the closet, pointing at his bedroom door. "Dude," he said as he followed him in, "I promise to sweep under the bed _religiously_ , just don't teleport anywhere that means I have to sneak you around under my family's noses."

Ebon shrugged, which wasn't a promise, and sat down on one of the milk crates that constituted most of the furniture. Frank wasn't sure if Ebon's family had money or if his mom was just a natty housekeeper or what, but sometimes the guy seemed like he was hardcore judging the Stone family whitetrash lifestyle. But what could you do? Ebon was the teleporter, and Fireball had invited him over after a battle for mutual patching-up _one time_ with promises that his family would not notice that he had someone over and wouldn't care if they did, and hadn't come up with a good reason to ask to be teleported out again since.

He was once again working on wording that didn't sound like he was either pressuring the guy into letting him visit _his_ house, or trying to scam free taxi service when Ebon said, "What else happened?"

"Huh?"

"Shock got you. He went to contact the Thanagarians. He got killed. You got rescued. What are you leaving out?"

Frank felt his face twist. He dropped onto the other chair-crate, facing Eebs. "He's _dead_ , man. You didn't go to our school. You don't get it. He was just a kid like us. Younger than either of us. He had an annoying big sister who actually gave a damn about him. I don't care how much of an asshole he was, he shouldn't be _dead._ "

Ebon nodded, impassive but not harsh. "What else?"

Damn. There he went being a natural goddamn leader again. Half the reason Frank didn't want to be an actual team was he knew he'd be the sidekick and no. That wasn't going to happen to him. This was his.

He looked away, feeling fire leap up along the backs of his hands and arms in response to his mood and enjoying that at least he didn't have to lock that down, in this company. "So he electrocuted me a bunch of times. So what." He clenched his fists tight at his sides to hold back any badly-timed trembling, and felt the raw patches on his wrists where rope had rubbed the skin away flare, almost the way fire used to feel before it was part of him.

Ebon looked pissed.

"Dude, you _asked._ "

"I'm not mad at _you_."

"Shock's dead. Let it go."

Ebon took a second to sigh. "Guess you have a point. But, Fireball…" One of his fists was in his lap, and it curled a little tighter and then opened. "You do get that you aren't expendable, yeah?"

"Yeah, duh." He was supposed to be the angry one here. And he _was_ , he was _furious,_ but he burned hot and you could only keep that kind of angry up for so long. He got up off his crate and flopped onto his bed instead. His shoulders were really mad at him for a second before deciding this was actually excellent. Why was Ebon even here? Frank wanted to sleep, but he also didn't want the other teen hero to leave.

When he was little, he'd stayed over at his granddad's house a couple of times. Frank was always bad at falling asleep as a kid. Granddad had sat by the bed and told him boring stories until he drifted off still listening to that whisper-raspy old smoker's voice. It'd been so different from falling asleep at home.

Ebon was still sitting on the crate next to the bed, and the silence was getting awkward. Frank narrowed his eyes at the ceiling. Ebon was seventeen, he'd said when Frank asked. They were all still kids. "Where _do_ you go to school, anyway?"

"I don't go to school."

Frank felt his jaw drop, jerked his head up so he could see his visitor again. "What?"

"I had to drop out. It wasn't safe." Ebon glanced down at the back of his own hand, grey-black and smoother than human, and _shit._ Frank had thought this whole time that was his _costume,_ that he wrapped himself in shadows for anonymity and style. He'd kept trying not to be pissed that he'd invited the guy to his _house_ and wasn't even trusted enough to see his face.

But this _was_ his face now.

"Shit, man," he said. Sat up, carefully, ignoring his complaining shoulders. "I had no idea."

Ebon shrugged. "I didn't tell you."

"No wonder you're so hot to find other Bang Babies, shit. I'll help more, I swear."

The ones who didn't have gangs ready to look after them, for better or worse; kids that couldn't pass for normal, they'd found them squatting in abandoned buildings, Vulture-Girl and Glow and all that crowd, even the more normal-looking ones that had nowhere to go and just wanted to be left alone…. They didn't like Frank, and he'd mostly left them to Ebon. Fitting in hadn't been something he cared about since long before he had superpowers.

Ebon had…not so much admitted as _hinted_ once that the reason he'd been down at the docks to get caught in the Bang was because a gang had been courting him for months and he'd been on the verge of joining up, even though he knew better, even though he'd had good prospects it could ruin, just because he wanted somewhere to belong.

He'd had to drop out of school. He was the kind of guy that should be looking at _colleges_ right now.

Eebs shook his head. "It's fine."

"Wait. You didn't run away from home, too, did you?" Hell, if Frank had been thinking his stupid thoughts about housekeeping while Ebon holed up behind a dumpster or something…but he shook his head.

"No. I live with my brother. He doesn't care."

About what, Frank wanted to ask, but he wasn't that much of a jerk. "Okay," he said inanely. "Okay."

"It is okay," Ebon told him.

It wasn't. "Sure," said Frank.

"Did Shock use anything besides his powers on you?" Ebon asked.

Frank shook his head. "Nah, he just tied me up." The combination of being tied up and being electrocuted had sucked, but Shock hadn't been the kind of guy to pull out more inventive tortures just to…torture. "I've got rope burns and muscle ache, okay, I'm fine. And he's dead, so I'll get plenty of chance to heal up."

"There is that," Ebon shrugged. "At least we got some breathing room."

* * *

The irony, Frank thought the next day. It burned.

He was late to school. After spending fifty-seven hours tied up in an abandoned warehouse he felt entitled. Plus it meant he didn't have to risk running into Hawkins' friends before class and running his mouth, as you do. He still saw them at lunch, though.

They looked worried.

More worried than usual. Which was already more worried than the average from back when Hawkins had been getting his ass kicked a lot by assholes and stewing about it, and biting off the head of anybody who tried to help.

There was absolutely no reason for Frank to feel guilty.

It wasn't like he'd gotten Shock killed. It wasn't like he'd _forced_ his stupid sparky nemesis to get killed dabbling in human trafficking. It wasn't like he could have _done anything_ while he was tied up in Shock's supervillain lair!

It wasn't like he could tell them anything. If they knew their buddy was a flying electric supervillain, he'd pretty much be outing himself as Fireball by giving them updates, updates which wouldn't be comforting anyway, and if they didn't he'd just look crazy. Also, if one of them started crying in the lunch room because of something he said, everybody would notice. Frank did not want to be the guy who made Frieda cry at lunch. Nope.

He was wrestling down _yet again_ the feeling that he should go _tell them_ so they didn't have to keep worrying until someone found Hawkins' body or something, when the roof exploded.

More accurately, it was bashed in. People were screaming even before rubble started to hit, and Frank felt fire leaping into his hands out of habit before he realized he couldn't just fry pieces of building out of existence in front of his whole school. He shoved his hands under the table to hide them, which would have worked better if he hadn't been surrounded by people trying to hide their whole selves under tables. Nobody seemed to notice anyway.

Daylight was pouring in through the hole, cut by dust and still lighting up the smudgy walls and cheap tables like never before, but it was blocked by an outline of a pair of wings too wide for any bird Frank had ever heard of. The shadow of a spiked mace fell on the wall over his head.

The Hawklady's wings beat once, and she sailed through the gap she'd made in the ceiling. "The _true name_ of the one called _Shock._ "

Her other hand was clenched around what looked like a scrap of cloth, but Frank knew was a T-shirt, he recognized the color and the lettering. _Ernest Hemingway High School,_ one of the T-shirts they kept aggressively selling at pep rallies. Why had Shock even _had_ one of those? Why had he left it in his _secret villain lair?_

"The _true name_ of the _one called_ _ **Shock**_ _,_ " she repeated, like she hadn't even noticed everybody desperately fleeing. She'd stopped bringing the building down, at least. "I know you know it. Someone here _knows._ "

Frank's hands had stopped even smoking; he shoved his way into the crowd. Dragged a skinny freshman up out of trampling range by the back of her shirt, then an already half-trampled fat dude who took both hands to shift. "Thanks," fat dude gasped.

Frank slapped him on the back. "Just move," he said, and shoved his way back into the flow.

"He _killed my husband_ ," Hawklady spat overhead. "I will have blood in payment. Where is his roost? What are his loves?"

Frank ducked his head and shifted rubble and focused on getting everybody he could out, before she got tired of talking. He hadn't found any dead yet. He passed an unconscious guy into the nearest cluster of hands.

It only took him about, like, five minutes to make sure nobody was being crushed to death, pull away from the crowd, run up a hallway until he was by himself, stuff his jacket under a random desk in a random classroom, tie his mask on, and then duck outside, and run back toward the crumbling side of the school as Fireball.

The Hawklady was already gone.

Well, shit. No heroic rescue today. Did that mean somebody had coughed up the name, or…? He didn't stick around to ask if everyone was okay, like he might've normally—it wasn't like Fireball had any healing powers, and he was still wearing the same outfit from earlier besides the mask and jacket, which somebody might notice, and emergency services were already screaming into the school parking lot.

Frank slunk away before he could get caught up in the police perimeter. Nobody would much notice if Francis Stone was gone, at least half the student body was already off campus and running. He'd cut class in way more suspicious situations before.

And he was pretty sure this thing was not over.

So, Shock took Katar Hol down with him. Frank found himself weirdly proud of his nemesis, and on the one hand felt like a prick for it because somebody was dead and somebody else was mourning him, but on the other hand, no, this lady was buying and selling teenagers yesterday afternoon and now she was smashing up a high school to get information. All her sympathy points had been subtracted and then some. She had landed herself in the zone of negative sympathy. There was probably a word for the opposite of sympathy, but this wasn't the time to figure it out.

For lack of better ideas, Fireball started pacing out the patrol route he jogged sometimes, the one that zigzagged past a lot of the problem spots in this part of Dakota, alleys it was easy to ambush people in, that kind of thing. He knew he was just one guy, didn't even have Ebon's advantages of teleporting or using shadows to spy for him, couldn't keep an eye on a whole city, but…. He used to get told he was just using people in trouble to feel self-righteous about getting into fights, and maybe so, but it would have been way _more_ selfish to stick to fights that didn't do anybody any good, right?

He really never cared if people were grateful. Hawkins had hated him for that, maybe. Before.

Maybe he and Shock had been playing ever since the Bang, just a little. Because having powers and somebody to throw down against with them was _fun_. But that didn't mean he wasn't serious about this, about helping. Fireball wasn't over just because Shock was dead.

Frank kept watching the skyline as he went. Habit, a little bit, but mostly that Hawklady was about as subtle as him and unless _she_ was now dead too, she'd probably make herself obvious again next time she went somewhere.

After about half an hour, he was starting to think he needed a new plan. Then he looked up, and saw that angel-shaped outline wheeling against the sky over the neighborhood he'd been circling toward, the one he'd long since learned to watch for hovering electric douchelord.

She must have found somebody who knew. Frank figured he couldn't be the only one who'd figured it out. Not all that many people Shock's age had such killer dreads, and if nothing else everybody who used to bully Hawkins had to have noticed the way he'd started beating _them_ all up, ever since lightning powers made him indestructible or whatever.

Also Hawkins had friends. Would Rick-of-the-tacky-earring have sold out his best bro's family, if threatened by omnicidal alien chick? Frank had no idea.

He'd already started to run.

He didn't know _exactly_ where Shock lived. Not like they'd ever been friends. But he figured he could follow the Hawk, and he did know Shock's family, a little. His sister volunteered at the community center his dad ran, sometimes, and Frank had spent a lot of time there over the years—it was somewhere to go when he couldn't face home but didn't want a fight, which had gotten less and less common the older he got, but still…

Mr. Hawkins was a good guy. The best. And he'd never heard anything bad about the sister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ebon's powers are ridiculous, and really poorly defined, he's got to be one of the most powerful metas of his generation. He would totally lead the Titans if they had one. Maybe they should have one.
> 
> Frank meanwhile is trying _really hard_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It occurs to me belatedly we (i.e. anyone reading this because it's in the Cirque series, hi!) might not all know Static Shock, so fyi he's a cool teen hero created by Dwayne McDuffy, who had a prestigious career trying to make comics less white. Static was acquired by DC one season into his cartoon, so there's a hilarious spot in an early episode where he originally made a Clark Kent joke re: secret identity and it was retconned into just...several seconds of awkward silence. XD
> 
> Premise is, a bunch of teenagers in midwest rustbelt city of Dakota got mutant superpowers because an evil corporation spilled toxic waste just when all the gang kids plus everyone they could pressgang last minute had gotten together on the docks for an ultimate showdown. Comics Virgil had actually gone to the fight seriously considering taking advantage of the chaos to murder his primary bully; in the cartoon which is way less raw he's just sort of generally peer-pressured into showing. Then he becomes a superhero.

Frank got fired up as he ran, hot and fierce with that little _twist_ in his head that kept his clothes from burning too.

He was very aware that his costume was incredibly grade-school level and his one saving grace was that he was _on fucking fire_ and that would never not be rad. The newspapers had started calling the three of them _The Elementals._ Lightning, fire, darkness. Whatever. Now it was just fire and dark.

And a family that didn't even know they'd lost somebody yet, about to lose a lot more.

She'd already smashed a hole in the front wall when he got there, and the broken electric wiring was spitting blue as dust tried to settle. Someone was screaming.

"—shatter your bones and spread your blood across the earth to paint a sign that can be read from the _sky,_ " Hawklady was threatening whoever had been inside the house when she broke it.

Frank tackled her around the waist.

In his defense, this had been a successful tactic for him before. His normal opponent was his age, flew by balancing on top of a metal disc, had trouble electrocuting anyone who wasn't touching the ground, and Frank outweighed him by twenty pounds. _None_ of this was true of Hawklady, and also she had superstrength. It was like trying to suplex a bag of cement.

He just avoided being caught as her hand tried to close around his shoulder. Shock had put up a good fight against _two of these?_ Hell. Shock was a smart fighter, what would he have done?

Range, that was it, that was the Hawks' disadvantage.

Fireball flung himself flat and rolled frantically to get out of the way of that mace as it whipped around toward him. They said on the news that it was practically an unstoppable force. He'd seen it blow in half the cafeteria ceiling in one stroke. His skull was not going to win that matchup.

She snorted at him and casually took out another third of the front of the house. The screaming started again for a second, then cut off.

Hopefully that didn't mean anybody was dead, but he clearly needed to step up his rescue game.

Frank threw one of his trademark fireballs, and singed half the leaves off the gnarled tree taking up half the Hawkins' front yard. Avoiding collateral damage got harder the further the fire was from him; whatever. The tree was an acceptable casualty.

"Hey, Ugly!" he shouted. Hawklady's wings flared in outrage, and she dropped six inches. "Yeah, I mean you! What kind of coward just goes around smashing up buildings full of screaming people? How's that make you tough?"

Her lip curled. Behind her, fire that had nothing to do with Frank lit up yellow as the sputtering wires caught something. "This isn't a performance, little boy," she said. "I am here to claim my payment in bleeding flesh."

The imagery was a little too good; Frank had seen hawks eat, and while he didn't _think_ she meant _that_ , he couldn't unsee the idea now. He fought down a gag and spat out, "Can't let you."

She snorted. "Little hatchling hero." A showy gesture with the heavy spiked mace. "Go away and I'll let you live."

Frank shook his head. Hell, he really was going to die probably. If he turned into a ghost he'd haunt his parents. Tell them it was their fault for refusing to get him a phone so he could have called for backup. Quick, say something heroic. "You want to hurt those people, you have to go through me."

The alien gave him a really unimpressed look, and turned around—because he wasn't actually _between_ her and the half-demolished house that was slightly on fire. Right. Her mace came up again, to finish bashing open the front of the building and drag out whoever was inside like it was a doll's house, and Fireball put on a burst of speed to slam his elbow into her lower spine with all his weight thrown behind the point of it.

Still like hitting cement, but cement this time that let out a noise that on another, less messed-up day would have been hilariously similar to a bird's squawk, and jerked away.

She spun the opposite way than he'd expected, brought down not her mace but the heavy edge of her hand and knocked him flat. From the ground below her feet, he desperately called up fire, enough to engulf more or less all of her but the wingspan, and when she shrilled outrage and brought the mace around he threw himself into a rolling dodge, back. At least he was keeping her busy. Hopefully the Hawkins were getting out the back door.

The mace caught his elbow and kept his dodge-roll going clear across the street and, almost as painfully, up over the curb into the base of Shock's neighbor's stupid, goddamn, possibly life-saving hedge. Frank spat out a leaf and bent and unbent his aching elbow, to make sure it was still working.

A very familiar voice said, "So I see _you're_ getting your ass handed to you with a complimentary bow."

Frank flipped onto his back. Shock, settling out of the sky on his metal disc same as always, crackling purple. There was a nasty-looking gash taped closed on one side of his forehead, and some subtle bruising, but otherwise he was just the same as ever. "Figures."

" _They said you were_ _ **dead!**_ _"_ Fireball shouted, lurching upright, and it came out as an accusation. How dare you, I demand a refund on my entire day of awkward resentful grief.

Shock tossed his dreads. "Well they can take themselves down a merry trip to Hell, whoever _they_ are, because I am _so_ among the living." He fired a bolt of electricity at Hawklady with one of those godawful coolguy poses, and then she had finished throwing herself at him and he had no more time to look cool.

There was still time to argue, though, back and forth as Frank flung fire at Hawklady and dodged her attacks and covered the civilians. It was easier now, most of Shayera Hol's attention transferred to Shock, the focus of her vengeance quest. Fireball scowled at his nemesis across a pillar of flame. "Did you _fake_ your death?"

"I'm a fast healer, what can I say."

" _That's not an answer!"_

"Tch. Tetchy," Shock grumbled, limbo-bending smoothly under a swing of alien mace. Frank suspected Shock was talking to him mostly because it allowed him to flagrantly ignore that Hawklady was attempting to be dramatic about her dead husband.

"You tried to _sell me to aliens!"_ Fireball shouted, and then as their opponent moved to go after her defenseless original targets again he flung up a fire shield, which was a special move Ebon had dreamed up and helped him test, that he'd been saving to surprise Shock with; oh well.

It worked; Hawklady rebounded off the almost-solid barrier, hissing, her feathers smoking slightly.

"It's not like I _succeeded_ , matchstick-head," Shock snorted. "Come on, stop holding back, this is taking way too long. Somebody's bound to get hurt."

" _You_ don't get to say that!" Fireball told his villain.

"It's _my_ family!"

"So work with me!"

"Fine!" Shock dropped out of the air right beside him and leaned in. "Barrage from the ground, I'll play helicopter, and when you see your moment do that thing you did in our second fight so I can contain." He leapt into the air again. "Go!"

Frank hated taking directions from Shock, but he _knew_ which of them was the thinky fighter here and even if Hawkins had somehow killed one Hawk, the Hawklady was still much more dangerous than _either_ of them. So he attacked.

The alien wasn't expecting it, which was why it worked. Even as he kept flaming, kept firing, she only protected herself from him half-heartedly, because she hated Shock more and electricity was more of a threat to her than heat.

To be honest, Frank didn't really expect to damage her, he was just punching flame from a safe distance and watching for moments he managed to make her stutter in flight, to shove her back away from the house and knock her sometimes into and sometimes out of the line of Shock's attacks. This was like all the fights he'd been in since he was a kid. The important thing was to _just keep swinging._

Fireball hit her again, again and _again,_ until the heat rush in his head was so high he was seeing everything in shades of white. And all the time Shock was darting around, forming the other half of the cage, raining lightning bolts down on her from above and showering her from all sides with whatever metal he could grab, including the nearest three street signs, a bunch of pipes that had probably gone inside the walls of his house at some point, and about a hundred nails and screws he'd wrenched from the wreckage.

Always from above. Forcing her toward the ground. She finally landed, Fireball a forgotten side note at the corner of her vision, planting her feet and raising her mace overhead with both hands to catch a particularly huge purple jolt. Shit, _now_. Fireball threw himself sideways at the gently smoldering tree-trunk, kicked off it for height to put him at an angle she didn't expect, pulled up everything, _everything_ he'd been holding back, and hit her square in the same spot in the middle of her back he'd elbow-slammed before with his very best shot.

 _"Now!_ " he shouted as she was blown off her feet, somersaulting forward with her wings all higgledy-piggledy and not even a little bit in control of her direction. And then he crash-landed in what used to be part of the Hawkins' front wall, but was now a mess on the sidewalk.

When Frank sat up, the pipes and the signposts had all corkscrewed themselves tightly around Hawklady's body and she was lying at Shock's feet, unconscious, still sparking purple.

Frank let out a whooshing breath.

"Oh my god," somebody said. A girl. Woman. " _Oh my god._ " It was…the sister. What's-her-face Hawkins. She was leaning against the base of the tree on the side that wasn't burning, half-collapsed, with her knees up to her chest.

Behind her, parts of the partly-exploded house were on fire. A lot of parts. A lot more parts than last time Frank looked.

That was…bad. Fireball reached out and pulled at the flames. It wasn't easy, not like drinking his own back in; these ones had a firm grasp on some perfectly nice wood and didn't care what he wanted. He had to force it. By the end he was pretty sure he'd lost twice as much energy making the fire do what he wanted as he got out of absorbing it, but at least that was _half_ the cost of stopping the fire covered.

It would've been easier if he'd been touching, but just the thought of climbing up a collapsing house to stand in various patches of fire made him want to faceplant in the nearest pile of rubble. Nope. Uh-uh. He'd _started_ today with severe muscle pain, and been hit a couple times since then.

A human voice pulled him back to events in the front lawn. Shock was still standing over Hawklady in her steel and copper prison.

"Son." It was Mr. Hawkins, looking tired and unhappy and, ehehe oops, very slightly scorched. "Virgil."

Shock's shoulders were tense, but he obviously knew there was no getting out of it now. He did one of those slow dramatic trenchcoat-sweeping turns. It would have helped if he'd still been hovering. "Hey, Dad. So, funny story."

"So this was why," Mr. Hawkins said.

"Oh, so you _did_ notice I was acting different."

"Of course I noticed." That was so _soft_ Fireball was embarrassed for him, and conspicuously looked around. No sign of cops yet. Not even any neighbors—it was like one in the afternoon, most people were probably at work. Anybody who wasn't was…probably hiding from the villain battle. "Of course I noticed, son. I just…"

Shock snorted. "Didn't think I had it in me, maybe?"

Mr. Hawkins looked down at the captured alien, twitching spasmodically. "Did you really kill her husband?"

"It was self-defense," Shock said, scowling. "They were planning to _sell me,_ Dad."

"Just like you were doing to this young man, as I understand it," Mr. Hawkins pressed, and damn, had he caught _every word_ everybody said during that fight? While his house fell down and got set on fire and a space Amazon with wings tried to kill him? He should quit his job and go work as a Disaster Journalist, compete with that Lane lady for death-defying bylines.

"Like that's the same thing," Shock scoffed, and got a thunderous parental frown in response. Ooh, yeah. Somebody was in trouble.

Infinitely mild disapproval. "Would you consider it justified if Fireball had killed _you_ , son?"

One of those smirks that Frank always ached to wipe off his smug hovering face. "I'd like to see him try."

Frank thought about the chicken leg he'd tried burning-to-destroy as an experiment, and how it had wound up no more than slivers of blackened bone. How fast it had gone to nothing. "No, you wouldn't," he said. He was so tired. Putting out fire was the worst _._ Families were the worst. Supervillains were the absolute _worst._

Both Hawkins men looked over at him like they'd forgotten he was there. Shock's lip curled back. "Yeah?" he asked. "You think I'd ever be scared of you? I took out _Hawklord,_ you heard that, right? By. My. _Self._ "

"Yeah, well it took us both to beat _her_." Frank ground his teeth. "No, whatever. Like I ever wanted to team up with you. I just never wanted you _dead._ "

Mr. Hawkins cleared his throat. "That reminds me of something I should have said sooner. Thank you for your help, young man. Your parents must be very proud of you," said Mr. Hawkins, and Frank's throat tried to lock up because, be real, they barely knew he existed.

"So we knocked out an alien," he said, a little too loud. "What now?"

"That's a good question," Mr. Hawkins admitted, letting the subject go, and they both looked at her. The house wasn't on fire anymore, but she was going to wake up sooner or later.

"I guess we can turn her over to the cops," Frank said, finally catching a distant sound of sirens. Someone must have called. "The FBI have that supercrime division that can handle aliens, right?

"I can't let you do that," Shock said.

Everyone looked at him. His hands were crackling again and he looked exactly like the supervillain he'd always been.

"She'll tell them who I am," he said.

"Well, son," said Mr. Hawkins in a slow, teacherish, you-should-have-thought-about-the-consequences-sooner voice, "if we let her go she'll come after us again, and we couldn't exactly keep her locked up in the basement forever even if we still had a house."

"Yeah, well," Shock raised one hand, and the flickering light across his masked face was like something from a horror flick. "There's another option."

He stretched out his hands toward the metal encasing Hawklady and Frank's breath came short and his vision darkened from the edges as he realized what the other kid was planning and he had to stop him but he was so tired and he _couldn't move fast enough._

It turned out he didn't have to.

" _Virgil Ovid Hawkins_ ," said Shock's dad, and he didn't shout. He didn't need to. The gathering seed lightning had shattered at just his tone. Frank was impressed. "You are my only son," Hawkins said firmly, "and I will always, _always_ love you. But if you kill that woman right now I will turn you in _myself_."

Shock's face was incredible to watch. Blank, for a second, then betrayed. For a second curled with the kind of fury that made Frank think he was going to say something like _then I'll kill you, too,_ and then blanketed with flat misery. He looked _defeated_ at the end, and his shoulders slumped, and there was no satisfaction in watching it at all. He turned away. "Fine," he said. "Fine, Dad. I see how it is."

Fireball wanted to yell at him. But it wasn't worth it. What was he even doing still here? He should go home and sleep. There probably wasn't school tomorrow. An alien blew up the cafeteria.

Small favors.

Shock started to walk away.

"Virgie." That was the big sister. Standing up and calmed down, she turned out to be tall and kind of gorgeous and currently dressed in teeny-tiny aqua jammies streaked with soot, and Frank hurriedly looked away because ogling disaster victims was totally low, especially when she was looking at her younger brother so damn _sad._ "Why'd you do it?"

Shock hovered in the air, not leaving, not answering. After long enough that Frank had to remind himself to breathe, "I liked finally having some power. I was sick of being a helpless target. Sick to _death_ of getting treated like a violent thug no matter what I did, of getting blamed for fights I didn't start _or_ finish." He shrugged. "So why not? I survived the spill, got these abilities. Might as well get some use out of 'em."

" _Use_ , Virgie?" the sister shook her head. "How's this useful?"

Shock's teeth showed. It wasn't what Fireball would call a smile. "I've got a bank account with five hundred thousand dollars in it and a lot of combat experience under my belt courtesy of this dipshit," he said, pointing at Frank.

"Hey, fuck you, I'm not your training wheels!" Frank yelled. How had Shock managed to steal five hundred thousand in eight months? Between him and Ebon, he'd kind of thought he hadn't actually been getting a lot of crimes off. Maybe it had been just a couple, sneaky, lucrative ones.

"You've got your dissertation defense coming up, right Sharon?" Shock asked, and now it did count as a smile, just a shitty one. "And all those student loans waiting to get paid off. Don't you want some help with that?"

"I'm not worried about my loans," said Sharon Hawkins, which Frank thought was probably a lie because as far as he knew everybody with student loans was worried about them. But considering she was an A-grade lunatic overachiever, maybe not. Frank was pretty sure she hadn't accounted for the fact that her house was falling down, though. "You aren't telling me this is all about money."

Shock shrugged. "Nah. Mostly just the profiling, and how sick I was of being helpless."

"Son," said Mr. Hawkins. "I thought I taught you better than to sink to match the low opinions of strangers."

Shock laughed. It wasn't a nice noise. "When did you ever have the time to teach me anything? You were always busy parenting half the city."

Hawkins flinched. And Shock took that moment to leave, for real this time, in a whirl of purple coat and gold accessories and having-the-last-word.

Everything was really quiet all of a sudden. A smallish piece of the house fell off, and one last wire sputtered, still trying to conduct current. Mr. Hawkins looked about a hundred years old.

"It's not your fault," Fireball said. Because he _had_ to. Because none of this was fair. "It's _not._ You're an awesome dad. I am so fucking jealous of that asshole, I don't—I mean," he stammered. Wow, Stone. Watch the mouth around the parentals, could you?

But Mr. Hawkins was smiling, even though he still looked so tired and so sad. "Don't worry about the language, son. Thank you. For everything." He cocked his head. "You knew about Virgil all along, didn't you?"

"For a while," Fireball admitted. He guessed he should have said something to someone, but… "I kept thinking he'd stop," he shrugged at last. It wasn't like he had a clean record himself. Bringing the authorities down on another kid had just seemed like…it wasn't right. Like it would be cheating.

Especially because Shock was right, Frank had an unfair advantage when it came to dealing with police—Frank was an _actual_ violent delinquent more than a year older than Virgil, who up until the Bang had just been a grouchy nerd, but Frank bet _he_ wasn't the one who'd gotten more shit from the cops. So yeah. It would have been cheating.

He'd known it wasn't exactly a game, that Shock was really hurting people and he had to keep them safe, but…he guessed now he _knew_ it wasn't a game.

And…the thing was….

He _still_ didn't want to see Virgil Hawkins in prison for life with a power-suppressing collar on him, any more than he'd wanted to see him dead. Because this wasn't a game, and jail wasn't the time-out room.

Frank nodded, more to himself than Mr. Hawkins. "Yeah. I really thought he'd stop." Get bored, or discouraged, or come up with a better idea, or… _something_. Or escalate, until it didn't seem like a dick move to sic the cops on him because he actually for real belonged in jail. Which he guessed had probably happened day before yesterday, with the torture, or today with the murder, but...

Like he'd summoned them by thinking, the sirens he'd been ignoring blared up, and suddenly the Hawkins house was surrounded by police and firefighters, at least ten car-and-trucks'-worth.

"Fireball." And that was Ebon, folding himself out of the shadows where a half-demolished wall leaned drunkenly into its neighbor.

"Eebs." Suddenly Frank felt about ten times more tired, but only half as miserable. "Yo."

"Looks like I'm late."

"Looks like," Fireball echoed. He rubbed his aching elbow. "Shock left," he said. "Mr. Hawkins wouldn't let him kill the Hawklady." Was that everything?

"I hope you have supervillain insurance," Ebon told the Hawkins.

The sister started to laugh. Listed over against the not-burned side of the tree again and mopped at her eyes. "We do," she said. "Virgil—Virgil told Dad to get it months ago, right after the Bang. We totally do."

Well. At least Shock had done _something_ for his family.

Now the police were coming up and telling everyone to put their hands up, and fortunately there was a captured supervillain on the ground for them to point most of the guns at because otherwise they'd probably be arresting everyone. And Mr. Hawkins had zeroed in on the highest-ranking cop on the field and was talking to him in that mild, infinitely respectable way he had about being attacked by this alien woman while he and his daughter had been home—yes, that was his daughter, she'd been up all night working on her dissertation, could anybody get her a cover-up?

And then paramedics were coming in with shock blankets (a _ha_ hahaha) and checking for concussions, and he and Ebon were getting sidelong looks from cops who recognized them as local heroes and weren't going to hassle them when they'd apparently just saved the day from a known baddie that was right here, but weren't that happy about having them hanging around, either.

One of the paramedics came over and started giving Frank the concussion test through his mask which, he was pretty sure he hadn't hit his head but he was kind of grateful to have somebody else making sure. Dude didn't like him claiming his name was Fireball; tough.

"So what _do_ we do with her, Captain?" one of the cops was asking. "She'll bust right out of lockup—even if we leave her all wrapped up in, in this Iron Maiden thing, I'm not sure she won't bust out."

"I'll take care of this," Ebon announced, and with no more lead-in than that he and the zappy-fried alien lady disappeared into puddles of blackness.

"Hey!" shouted the nearest cop indignantly.

The captain made a _pffff_ sort of sound through his moustache. "Believe me, son, he was doing us a favor. You _don't_ want a supervillain locked up in the station if you can help it. Even if she _didn't_ break out I wasn't looking forward to waiting to see which other crazies might've come to rescue her before the Feds could get here. I'm sure he's got some special superhero base to hold her in 'til he can hand her over to the Bureau." He looked straight at Fireball. "Right?"

Frank was pretty sure he didn't, actually. "Yeah," he agreed. "Ebon's all over that kind of thing." He struggled to his feet. "I should go catch up with him, actually," he said.

"Yeah, okay." The captain glanced around at the sheer amount of fire damage and didn't tell him 'good work,' which sorta burned because it wasn't like he'd set the house on fire, just the tree, but oh well. He wasn't working for police brownie points here. "See you."

Acting on instinct, like usual, Fireball headed north. Toward a particular wharf he'd jumped off just yesterday.

Sure enough, there was the purple trench coat, sailing out over the lake on that stupid disc of his, a bulging knapsack slung over one shoulder.

Personally, Frank wouldn't taunt fate by hovering toward the center of Lake Michigan on a piece of metal held up only by powers you'd just thrown massive amounts of at an alien, _with_ a definite head injury, but maybe Shock really was just that much stronger than him.

"Hey, Shock!" he shouted. The floating disc wobbled in the air, hung still, and then slowly arced around and back across the harbor to hover just inside Frank's range. If he flared up, Hawkins could be too far away to hit before he could actually fire off any fire. It was more caution than usual; was he tired too or just feeling jumpy?

He crossed his arms. "What do you want _now_ , Fireball?"

"Make you a deal," Frank said. And this was such a bad idea, but. "If you promise to—stop," he said. "To not be a villain anymore. Then we'll contact the space police _ourselves_ to hand her over, and she won't be in the custody of anybody who'd care about your ID. And you can go home."

'Home' wasn't exactly a location right now, with the state of the house, but still. It had to be better than living on the run.

"You can do that?"

"Yeah." They'd figure something out.

Shock accepted that, this absent little shrug as he went with 'special superhero resources' just like the cops had. Then his face fell into even harsher lines. "Why?"

And there were a lot of reasons. And reason number one should have been that Shock as a desperate fugitive was way, way more dangerous than Shock at home, not doing crimes, but really that was reason number two. "Because I don't want your life to be over," Frank said honestly.

Shock jerked back in the air like he'd burned him.

"There are lots of things you could do with powers besides be a supervillain," Frank insisted. "Lots. But if you do this you'll never get the chance to be anything else. And you've got a family that actually cares about you, and it's just not…" He shook his head. He was way too tired for this.

Virgil Hawkins squinted through his mask. "Is this some kind of white guilt thing?"

Frank caught fire. "Fuck you," he spat from inside the flames. "This is a 'I thought you were dead for twenty hours' thing. You have _no idea_ how good you have it. I _know_ racism sucks but _your dad loves you_ , and you just take that for _granted_."

Shock was looking at him like he was even more of an idiot than normal. "He just threatened to _turn me in_."

"If you made him! By murdering somebody in cold blood right in front of him! He has these things called _morals,_ maybe you've heard of 'em?" His fire burned without smoke, once it got going, but steam was rising around him as the spray on the aluminum dock boiled.

"She's an _alien._ "

"Now who's sounding racist? What the _hell,_ Hawkins." He knew why Virgil had been at the Bang—pressure from the gangs, threats, all that boiling rage he'd talked about earlier. That wasn't an excuse but it was a _reason._ Just like the endless grind of racism was a reason; just like not getting enough of Daddy's attention was. "Just—take the deal, okay? We're still kids."

The same smirk he'd used just yesterday, looming over a bound captive in his warehouse lair on the same docks where they'd all been poisoned into powers. "I'm fifteen, they'd try me as an adult."

Frank's bones ached. "So _go home and stop being an idiot._ "

"You think it's that easy?"

"I think it doesn't matter if it's hard! Fuck you! You _tortured_ me, you tried to _sell_ me, you think I care if you have it rough? But your family doesn't need to lose you on top of everything."

Shock scowled. It made him look like a _little_ kid. "They're better off without me anyway."

"Looks that way." There weren't really any shadows out here, except under the dock in the water, so Ebon must have walked, but Frank hadn't heard him and judging by Shock's face he hadn't seen anything. Eebs was just that good.

"Yeah," Ebon continued in his slow, easy way that was actually really fucking intense, purple highlights sliding over his forehead, "it sure looks like it. Except, you know…going off and making new enemies isn't much of a way to keep them safe."

Shock drew a sharp breath.

Hawkins had never let Frank help him before. Not that he'd tried all that hard, to help this one particular guy, but he'd always especially liked a fight against people he could feel good about hitting, so he'd waded in against bullies a lot.

Virgil Hawkins was one of those who got madder than anything about people trying to 'rescue' him, and Frank had respected that, the same way he did Shock's going out of his way to kick his bullies around once he had powers. Like, yeah, that makes sense. Doesn't mean you're going to get your way.

" _This_ is what you can do," Ebon said. "You've got one more chance left. Fireball has the right to hate you, Shock. Turn his back and let your mistakes catch up with you and nobody could blame him. But he's looking out for you, instead. One chance. What you going to do?"

Shock shook. Just a little, with tension, maybe exhaustion, possibly concussion—Frank was more and more sure it wasn't a good idea for him to try to fly over the lake right now.

He began sailing away, backward, a retreating curve, and Frank felt himself sag. His fire had gone out. He wasn't sure when.

Like that had been the cue he was waiting on, Shock tightened the curve until he looped right around and landed on the next dock over. The disc telescoped shut into a wedge, and Shock bent to pick it up. Caught Frank's eye as he straightened, and nodded.

It wasn't a friendly look, which Frank was plenty okay with, but then Shock outright scowled at Ebon. Then he walked off his dock and disappeared between warehouses—Frank suspected Hawklady had busted up his secret base pretty good, but maybe he had a stash of everyday clothes somewhere still, so he could turn up at home like 'holy crap my house!'

…the kids at school were going to have told the cops Hawklady was looking for Shock, but that wasn't _proof_.

"Let's get off the docks," he said to Ebon.

"Before you fall in the lake," Ebon said back.

"So," Frank asked, once they were definitely alone in the open space behind a restaurant a few blocks away. "We promised. How are we making this happen?"

Ebon twisted his wrist and teleported a little grey business card into being between his fingers. "I have the number for Alexander Luthor's private office."

"His _direct line?_ "

"Probably just his secretary." He held the card out. "It should be enough."

"Can we be sure he won't ask her about Shock?"

"No. But from everything I know about Luthor he'd respect the deal we just made. As long as Hawkins stays straight, he'll be safe, no matter what Hawklady tells Luthor."

"Okay…" Frank rubbed his sore elbow again. "Where are you keeping her, anyway?"

"Basement at my brother's place. I'd like to get her out of there before he notices."

Frank laughed a little harder at that than it probably deserved. "Okay, so we make the call now," he allowed when he was done. "Where from, though? I'm not using my home phone for this." Luthor was cool, but he didn't need to know Fireball's secret identity.

"There's a payphone on Taft Street that's still working," said Ebon. "We'll use that."

Luckily, going to a place with Ebon meant Frank only had to walk as far as the shadow of the restaurant building, and from the shadow of a dumpster out onto Taft Street, instead of a mile and a half across town.

The plexiglass booth had space for both of them, but not a lot to spare past that. They were both big guys already. If they'd both been finished growing, they'd have been unbearably cramped. Ebon would have needed to go two-dimensional, if he could even do that on transparent surfaces.

The booth smelled of burned rubber, from Ebon having walked out on the dock right after Frank heated it up. Hopefully those hadn't been expensive shoes.

They both stared at the pay phone.

"You do it," Frank said. "You're better with words than me."

"No, you. I wasn't even in this fight. Besides. You'll play better."

Because Ebon sounded black, Frank realized he meant, and briefly got so angry he had to wait until his skin cooled down to make sure he wouldn't melt anything plastic he touched. "Okay," he said, lifting the pay phone off its hook and digging for change. "You have to stand here and coach me through it, though."

It occurred to him while he was dialing that he could have turned the fact that Ebon hadn't helped fight back around on him, and said he could do _this_ part, to make up for it. But if Eebs was _right_ and Frank's accent would go over better with whatever secretary type they got through to….

Ebon propped one shadowy elbow against the glass back wall and lounged. "By the way. My name's Ivan."

Frank found himself grinning. On the other end of the line, somebody picked up.

"Luthorcorp, Mercy speaking."

"Uh, hi," Frank said, because he was the actual worst choice for this. "We kind of captured an alien supervillain. Help?"

Ebon— _Ivan_ —placed one hand over his eyes. Fireball held his breath, because if he laughed right now the lady on the telephone was going to decide this was a prank call, and hang up.

"I see," she said instead. "Details?"


End file.
